


Sometimes you've gotta look to see what you can do

by Des98



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:19:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des98/pseuds/Des98





	Sometimes you've gotta look to see what you can do

“Harry! Can you help me with my potions essay?” Seamus shouted from across the Gryffindor common room.  
“Open a book, would ya?” Harry shouted back at him, “I’m trying to do my transfiguration homework!” Honestly, being a potions prodigy was a real pain in the arse for Harry. It might have been easier if it at least caused Snape to be a little nicer to him, but the fact that the bitter professor couldn’t find fault in any of Harry’s perfect brews only made him more acerbic to him, despite the fact that Harry was easily earning O’s, making him one of the only students whose grades shed a positive light on the Slytherin’s teaching methods. Harry wasn’t surprised though: with the combination of inheriting his mother’s talents and having spent his whole life cooking for the Dursley’s (and getting hit if the meals weren’t up to their impeccable standards) potions was the only class that required next to no effort for him. Transfiguration and Charms were fairly simple for him as well, although they’d be far more so if he could just drop the glamours. He wished he could put his brewing talents to good use and make healing salves and nutrient potions to help him recover from summers at the Dursley’s, but Snape watched him even more closely than his remedial students (maybe if he didn’t, there wouldn’t be as many explosions on the part of Neville and Seamus). And buying ingredients was out of the question for him, as he didn’t want to be seen buying very medical-specific potions components from the apothecary when the wizarding world and its newspapers (which were basically glorified tabloids) watched him like a hawk and obsessed over his every breath.  
He leaned down to pull another book from his bag, adjusting his glasses on his nose before realizing he had the wrong one. Stupid glasses: they weren’t the right prescription when Aunt Petunia Picked them up from a charity bin and they certainly hadn’t gotten any better: the opposite, in fact. Getting an idea, he turned to Hermione.  
“Hey ‘Mione, do you know a spell that can fix these glasses? I think my prescription needs to be adjusted,” he said, turning to the girl beside him, who was currently trying to wrangle her bushy curls into an elastic, toffee-colored freckles from her summer holiday speckling the coffee-colored skin on her nose and cheeks.  
“Hm? Oh, sorry,” she remarked, taking her quill out from between her teeth and giving up hope of pulling her afro into a ponytail and pulling out a sweatband to push it off her forehead instead. “I don’t think there is a spell for that, Harry. You’ll have to visit either an eye-healer or an optometrist for new glasses. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t asked about it sooner- you’ve had those glasses as long as I’ve known you. How long has it been since you’ve had your eyes checked?”  
“Um, a while.” Harry deflected, blushing as his mind screamed “never, you liar!” into his ear. “I’ll talk to my relatives about it this summer,” he hesitated slightly at the word relatives and felt bad for burying himself deeper into the lies he spun between him and his best friends. So much for decent sight.  
“Oh. Alright, see to it that you do,” she told him, looking slightly concerned but otherwise letting it go.  
As Harry squinted at the board in History of Magic the next day, taking notes in a flagging effort to keep himself awake, he thought more about the problem. There had to be something he could do; if he could function in potions class, the one lecture the teacher gave no verbal instructions on the work process, as well as he did without being able to see the board, he was hopeful that maybe this could help him. He already had an idea brewing (no pun intended, Harry was too deep in thought for that) and he knew he could owl-order the ingredients he needed without raising suspicion- the ingredients he needed weren’t overtly specific to a certain salve or potion like Murtlap tentacles or bobotuber pus. He grabbed a catalogue from his bag and slipped out, as Binns was oblivious and even Hermione had fallen asleep at this point in the even-more-than-usual lesson. He smiled slightly to himself, thinking it might have something to do with the muggle fantasy novels her parents had sent her yesterday- responsible as she was, golden girl Granger couldn’t put a book down once she’d started, even if it meant staying up all night.  
A week later (Harry had dismissed with his usual (conditioned) frugality and paid for expedited shipping- it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it) he was in the first-floor girl’s bathroom, chatting with Myrtle as he experimented during dinner. He’d told his friends he was studying in the library and would have Dobby bring him something to eat, but he couldn’t be bothered- two meals at a day was more than enough and more than what he was used to, and besides, poor Myrtle always felt lonely this time of day. She told him that she used to sit in the dining hall and all the happily chatting students made it easier to pretend she herself had friends. Harry could relate to that from primary school days all alone at lunch, eating wilting vegetables and molding bread or nothing at all.  
He liked Myrtle, and he could open up to her in a way he couldn’t with anyone else, and she was delighted with his new experiment. Olive Hornby had broken her glasses so many times that reparo didn’t work anymore, and she didn’t ever tell her parents because she didn’t want them to know she was being bullied- they were muggles and she knew that they would worry and that they wouldn’t be able to get through to the school officials with Britain’s emphasis on blood purity. Harry learned from talking to Myrtle that wizarding society was bigoted long before Voldemort, and the government not-so-secretly condoned it behind their “equality” propaganda. Voldemort just escalated it from quotidian racism directed at those that weren’t part of elite society up to the constant fear of death.  
“What you adding now, Har?” She broke his train of thought by asking.  
“Lacewig flies- my theory is that the transparency and flexibility of their wings and the durability of the exoskeleton will help the prescription self-adjust and keep the lenses from getting scratched.”  
“That’s really smart. I was always bollocks at potions.”  
“Yeah, but you were good at charms, Myrt. The advice you gave me on that homework assignment really helped.” Myrtle beamed at this.  
Harry was almost done. Now he just needed to add a permanency charm to keep the potion active until he was of age and able to go to a real eye doctor. Adding wand magic to a potion was always very tricky due to the delicate and often volatile process of mixing the two and thus was normally not taught until NEWT level, but the fact that Harry excelled in the subject despite his “teacher” bespoke of his prowess, and it was a relatively simple process for the scrawny, raven-haired teen.  
“Okay, now just to coat the lenses,” he muttered, taking of his glasses and levitating them gently into the bubbling mixture. He levitated them back out again and let them cool and dry before groping blindly on the counter to grab them and put them back on.  
The results were amazing. Not only did the potion work, but this was first time in his memory that Harry could see properly. Everything was so crystal clear and sharp, and the teen realized that what he’d had before only made it so that he could marginally function. This was mind-blowing; he’d never imagined the sense of sight could feel like this. He’d thought he could see the world, but it was just a shadow of what proper vision felt like. He couldn’t wait to sneak out tonight and go see the outside of the castle properly. It was sure to be stunning.  
He gradually came out of his trance to see Myrtle smirking at him fondly.  
“Great, isn’t it? I remember my first pair. Of course, I was five. I don’t know how you made it so long without a proper eye exam.”  
“Oh, I’m so sorry Myrtle, I’ve been selfish. Would you like me to see if this would work on yours?”  
“They won’t love; I’m not physical enough for a potion to work, even one as good as yours.” She said sadly. Then, smiling for his sake. “But I’m so happy for you. I saw the way you squinted at everything; you would have definitely had to get one within the next year or you would have been blind or very nearly quite soon. I’m glad you figured out a solution; I was trying to bring it up, but you know I’m so very shy even with you. I’ve never had a best friend before Harry, so I’m sorry if I’m doing it wrong.” She looked down and the specter of a blush appeared on her flickering cheek.  
“Oh Myrtle, you’re perfect,” Harry told her, his heart aching for this other broken soul as he wished he could hug her.  
“Well,” the ghost broke the silence, seeing her friend getting upset. “You’d better get that bottled and down to the chamber,” she waved an opaque hand at the cauldron.  
“Shit, you’re right,” he started, looking at his watch as Myrtle giggled (nobody cursed in front of girls when she was alive, so she was tickled pink when he did), “I’ve a class in ten minutes.” He quickly conjured a few phials, spelled his concoction into them, banished the mess, shrunk the cauldron, and put it in his pocket. He then hissed the password to go down into the chamber/his private potion stores (it was mostly the basilisk parts that he’d harvested plus a few nondescript plants from Hagrid’s garden that the giant had given him, but it was his and his alone). He thought over what Myrtle had said about how he wouldn’t have been able to see within the next year if he hadn’t fixed his glasses and was suddenly very, very grateful he’d come up with something. He was determined to keep the dark, dark secret of his home life a secret, and he’d narrowly dodged a bullet with this one.


End file.
